by Stephen Fry
‘Is there no alternative?’ I asked.
‘There is one,’ he replied to the accompaniment of a hiccough in which I detected a mingling of Rossmore oysters, Tabasco and, surprisingly, a New Zealand Chardonnay. ‘I have a radical solution which will involve the expenditure of one life. One only life.’
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘you are talking about “taking out” Saddam Hussein.’
‘By no manner of means. The only event, in my judgment, which will stop war is the precipitate termination of the existence of George Bush.’
I put up my hand to interject but the distinguished spymaster would brook no interruption.
‘Before you think I have run howling mad, hear me out,’ he said. ‘I am talking here theoretically. Imagine if you will for just one moment please the effect on American morale if they thought that their war effort in the Middle East was to be masterminded by Dan Quayle.’
My mouth fell open.
‘Precisely. Dan Quayle as Commander-in-Chief, Dan Quayle giving daily press conferences in the White House, Dan Quayle conferring with the British, Syrian, French, Italian, Saudi generals who would be his allies, Dan Quayle trying to temper the ambitions of his generals, Dan Quayle announcing a draft of young Americans – the same Dan Quayle whose family pulled strings to keep him out of Vietnam when he himself was subject to a draft. The idea is preposterous, yet the sudden demise of George Bush would bring it into stark reality. Think on.’
‘Are you seriously recommending that an elected leader be assassinated …?’ I began.
‘The ethics are without my province, I deal in mechanisms and contingencies, good afternoon.’
A pin-prick on a map settled Old Amersham as my next port of call. A florid old buster in a stained REME tie had a well of military experience on which to draw.
‘Drew up plans to construct a base camp in a huge bugger of a wadi twenty miles from Tobruk. Woke up next morning, wadi gone. Sandstorm you see, redrawn the landscape in four hours. Another thing, my sergeant was a Geordie, told him to get the men to work round the clock to remedy the situation. Whole platoon knocked out by exhaustion and sunstroke. Old fool had got them marching for twenty-four hours without stop. Communication, d’y’see? To a Geordie “work” sounds like “walk”. Nightmare. Now, picture four tank brigades in the heat of battle in the Iraqi desert, one Syrian, one British, one Yank, one French. All on radio comms. Tower of bloody Babel, I mean what? No, no, won’t do at all.’
I moved on.
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ said a doctor from Long Melford. ‘Soldiers are made from flesh and bone and tissue that is, as Wilfred Owen said, “so dear achieved”. It has taken them from seventeen to thirty years to grow into what they are. In seconds it can be a tangle of blood and smashed material that can never be put right again.’
‘Whoops!’ I said. ‘Isn’t this conchie talk I’m hearing? Are you in the business of giving comfort to the enemy?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m in the business of repairing flesh. Just be sure, that’s all. For God’s sake be sure.’
A vigorous lady stocking up on mange-tout in Hexham market had a point of view too.
‘I’m sick and tired of hearing the moaners and the appeasers who say that the whole thing is because of oil. These people never seem to have heard of the word principle. If Kuwait had been the lowliest, poorest little country in the world we would have rushed to its aid. Principles and values. I can’t say that often enough.’
‘What about the hostages?’
‘Well that MP had it about right, didn’t he? Their relatives are just miaowing and spewing. Shameful.’
‘Perhaps you and that MP would like to swap your families for the ones out there? That way our resolve against the oppressor can be strengthened.’
‘Don’t get clever. It’s very easy to be smart, it’s far harder to stick to values and principles, principles and values.’
‘Righto.’
Playing the Political Game
I don’t know whether the Prime Minister (I am assuming that by the time you read this M.H. Thatcher will still be the holder of that great office – this article will take up to three minutes to fax and three minutes, as no one once said rather amusingly, is a very long time in politics) but I don’t know, as I say, whether the Prime Minister at the time of this article going to fax has a genuine interest in cricket. I suspect she has not. Her recent remark to Neil Kinnock that he was ‘bowling from the Nursery End’ suggests that her acquaintance with the game is, at the most, nodding. To a non-cricketer her implication that Mr Kinnock’s bowling was childish makes some kind of sense as word-play; a cricketer however would take such a remark to be a profound compliment. To be told that you are bowling from the Nursery End is to be told that you are playing first-class cricket, at the headquarters of the game and at the end of the wicket from which so many of the greatest bowlers in history have chosen to bowl, taking advantage of the famous Hill. Left-handers, of course, have preferred the Pavilion End, notably Hedley Verity in 1934, but left-wingers are free to choose either end.
All this is by way of being irrelevant; the notable flurry of cricketing metaphors is however of great psychological interest. The choice of cricket as a frame of reference reveals the deep sense of British solidarity all the personalities involved in this leadership tussle wish to convey. There can be no greater way of showing Europe how private this whole business is than by reverting to a series of images that only an Englishman (in Europe at least) can understand. The Continental press is obviously fascinated by the internal rumblings in the Conservative Party, but it is a private fight after all, however wide its reverberations, and at some subconscious level all the participants have made a decision to eschew the more readily comprehensible soccer analogies that would have allowed Europe access to the subtleties (such as they are) of the debate. As it is even the subtitles of the debate would reveal nothing to them.
As a Welshman, Neil Kinnock, I have no doubt, will, when his time shortly comes,1 introduce the language of Rugby Football into prime ministerial rhetoric, which will confound any but French observers of our political scene.
It all demonstrates that we need never fear for our sovereignty, whosever head is on our coins and whichever bank decides our Minimum Lending Rates, so long as we have mastery of a language that can so effectively bind us together and shut out our non-Anglophone neighbours. However divided we may appear, the sound of our politicians talking a figurative English of stumps and wickets and bouncers and boundaries, even in the heat of internecine party battle, has a strangely unifying effect.
Meanwhile in Australia our touring party is coming under a barrage of assault from the press of the host country. The Melbourne Age, a respectable newspaper, speculated on whether this squad is the worst ever to visit Australia. I wonder if, in a spirit of generous reciprocity, Graham Gooch will borrow the language of politics in his defence. ‘I have stood at the Despatch Box many times and been asked searching questions by the Opposition,’ he might say, ‘but I have always been able to deflect them. I am still at that Despatch Box and intend to remain there. It’s up to the selectors if I am to remain, it is not up to the media. I would remind you that over-rates and productivity are higher than at any point in the seventies. I am deeply sorry that Ian Botham is on the back-benches, but essentially we are both in full agreement on matters of substance. He and I were part of the team that caused a great and miraculous revival of England’s fortunes in the early eighties, it would be madness to lose faith in the policies that we both saw through so successfully, simply because of a temporary blip now.’ It might work.
Meanwhile Michael Heseltine is polishing the ball against his trousers and walking back to his mark ready to bowl. It remains to be seen whether Mrs Thatcher can win by an innings or whether she will be forced to follow on.
Whatever one’s politics no one can deny that this is entertainment of the highest order. Nothing has happened in Parliament for years that has be
en half so exciting as the events of the last week. Drama, tactics, occasional longueurs, timing, luck and skill all have played their part. I don’t go along with the stuffed shirts who believe that this is bad for the country or bad for our image. The winner, Brian, as always, is the Great Game itself.
1Bad prophecy
My Leonardo
I was given a Leonardo portrait the other day. Despite a great deal of pressure I have resisted the temptation to place the work on the open market. I am determined that it should stay in this country, in private hands. My private hands in fact. It would be catastrophic if this important piece should find its way to the Getty Museum or a Japanese boardroom, both of whose profligacy has swollen the art market beyond what is seemly or proper. I am trying to persuade a friend who owns a delightful Raphael to emulate this selfless patriotism. This portrait is not actually by Leonardo, it is more of Leonardo, done when he was very young, still a teenager as it happens. It shows him in typical pose, the distinguishing blue bandana wound around his head, his shell quivering with mischievous energy, stomach fairly bulging with pizza, his green skin absolutely glowing with good health. Of all the four Pubescent Morphollactic Ninjitsu Chelonians, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as they prefer to style themselves, Leonardo is quite my favourite.
The portrait is fashioned from bright emerald plastic rendered against one side of a pure white drinking vessel, the whole cunningly wrought into as pleasing a bibelot as one could hope to possess. It was given to me by Neil, my trusty ‘stand-in’ on the Jeeves and Wooster set, who in turn was presented it by the Slough branch of the Blockbuster Video Shop as a reward for hiring a video cassette from them. How it fell into their hands I cannot guess; no doubt the usual trail of blood, ambition, revenge and ill-luck that dogs all fabulous items has pursued it since leaving the factory in China where it was fashioned. Yes, China. Strange, is it not, that the vast wall of Turtle merchandising that is all that stands between the High Street and bankruptcy this recessional Christmas should have given so much work to the manufactories and sweat-shops of the Republic of China whose hideous gerontocracy has been responsible for one of the most obscene and shameless massacres since the war?
The Turtles, for those who do not know, are strange young creatures named Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo, who live in sewers with a rodent sensei and their human friend, April. They are devoted to pizza and the thwarting of the evil plans of their enemy, the Shredder. Such is their phenomenal success with young people all over the world, through television cartoons and a feature film, that there is no item that springs readily to mind that has not been packaged as a piece of Turtle merchandise. Toothbrushes, duvet covers, crockery, jig-saw puzzles, chewing-gum, underpants, hats, coats, gloves, alarm-clocks, lavatory-paper, computer games, tinned spaghetti, wallpaper, corn-plasters, even books I shouldn’t wonder, all have been turtlised and stacked in the shops. Out of the best possible motives, those concerned have been careful to keep the prices of these itemries just low enough to enable Mummy and Daddy to fork out without too loud a squeak. This means that the factories of the West lie idle as far as the production of these cloacal reptiles is concerned. The underpaid billions who toil under the yoke of the unspeakable old beasts who run the People’s Republic of China are given the job of filling our stockings.
We in the West are actuated by motives of the purest altruism in this as in all matters. We Do Not Do Business With Tyrants, naturally, unless they are tyrants who can gear their factories for the production of Turtle peanut butter jars. Disgusted as we were by the carnage of Tiananmen Square we know that Sanctions Do Not Work, unless the sun is in Sagittarius in which case naturally, as civilised people, We Must Implement Sanctions Across The Board. We show our support for the students and liberals of China and their fight for democracy not by cutting China off from the rest of the world but by giving them designs for Turtle pencil cases. This is all part of what we like to call Giving A Moral Lead. A moral lead in the pencil, presumably.
If all objects that we use and own gave off the smells and sounds and senses that went into their production, wouldn’t the world be extraordinary? A BMW car would emanate order and crisp efficiency, a hand-made table would smell of a carpentry shop and hours of devoted craftsmanship, a pair of Turtle pyjamas would scream with the cramped, half-lit clatter of a sweat-shop where children and young girls slave away hour after hour for enough money to buy, for instance, a packet of Weetabix containing a giveaway plastic Turtle.
Perhaps, heaven forbid, I am being naïve. But perhaps, heaven forbid even more strongly, it is still more naïve to hope that the people of China might be delivered into freedom for the price of a million plastic Leonardo coffee mugs.
It is probably safest to shut our eyes, stop thinking about where things come from, who makes them and under what conditions, and remember that trade is trade, business is business and that charity begins at home. It is Christmas after all.
A Chatterer Chatters
I am happy to be able today to write as one of an insidious force, part of a self-nourishing coterie of aggrieved nonentities who swirl ill-naturedly in a vortex of their own making. If you recognise the words then you probably read a leading article in the Daily Telegraph the other day by someone called Alan Clark MP, writing to praise the qualities and character of John Major. In doing so he singled out Mr Major’s ‘classlessness’. The old cliques, the grouse moor gentlemen and the union baronies no longer ‘have teeth’, Mr Clark asseverated, ‘a far more insidious force, if only because its members are so committed to their advancement at the expense of everyone else, is that self-nourishing coterie of aggrieved nonentities known as the “chattering classes”: dons, actors, television producers, “commentators”, playwrights. Their real complaint is that they feel themselves excluded (that is to say from access, consultation, backstairs influence) … from government for the last ten years.’
Well now this is fighting talk. As a member of the second profession listed and indeed as someone who has written a play, I feel it incumbent upon me to reply to these freakish charges. Let us try to put names to some of these monsters who are simultaneously so threatening and so impotent. Firstly dons: let me see … Maurice Cowley is a don, so is Roger Scruton, both part of the ‘Peterhouse Mafia’ often credited with the establishment of an intellectual framework for modern Conservatism. Alan Walters, Mrs Thatcher’s famous economic adviser, is an academic too. Members of the Adam Smith Institute, the Bow Group and other Tory institutions also qualify. What about actors? There are so many. Let us choose a few at random. How about Sir Alec Guinness? Perhaps we should, according to recent fashion, ‘skip a generation’ and look at, say, Anthony Hopkins or Paul Eddington. I know a number of television producers, the first who ever gave me a job was the redoubtable Dennis Maine Wilson, who brought Hancock and the Goons to prominence, or there is Biddy Baxter, the begetter of Blue Peter, or Roger Ordish who produces ‘Sir James’ll Fix It’. In the category ‘commentators’ I suppose I could suggest Richie Benaud or Brian Johnston, the great cricket broadcasters, but I suspect Mr Clark was referring to the political kind. John Cole of the BBC with his merry Ulster brogue and great gifts of extemporaneous exposition is both efficient and endearing. Playwrights complete the grim elite. Let us choose Sir Ronald Miller, the charming and courteous dramatist whose speeches written for Mrs Thatcher included the celebrated ‘You turn if you want to: the lady’s not for turning’, an arch reference to the title of a play by another wicked dramaturge, Christopher Fry.
What a gang of aggrieved, self-nourishing, insidious, ill-natured, vortex-swirling nonentities is here! How they chatter like all their class; what a threat they pose to democracy. With what ruthless self-interest do they pursue their advancement. How right Mr Clark is to draw our attention to this sinister sodality of embittered and dangerous nobodies.
But perhaps I have picked the wrong names, in fact I will go further: of course I have picked the wrong names. Mr Clark, that great and
substantial entity, was not thinking of those dons or those playwrights, he was thinking of other dons and playwrights, men and women who do not align themselves with the Conservative Party. The dangerous ones, as far as he is concerned, are those who have the temerity not to share his political views. It is a marvellous world he inhabits, one in which the dons who write articles in the national press, who counsel and nourish each other in the interest of his party, use their influence benignly, with unfailing responsibility and modesty, while those dons who fail to find themselves in whole-hearted support of this government use the influence which, to their frustration, they do not possess, malignantly, chatteringly and insidiously. They are a threat to democracy and our way of life; they must be excoriated for daring to dislike the tenor and thrust of the last decade.
But the government of the last ten years has been popular, some might argue. It must therefore follow that those who do not support it have contempt for the will of the people, are undemocratic and elitist. When a Labour government comes to power shall we expect Conservative dons, playwrights and commentators therefore to hold their tongues? Of course not, in a generous, pluralist society it is acceptable for all those with views to be allowed to express them, whether ‘chattering’ around a table or writing in a newspaper. What is unacceptable is a denial of this kind of free exchange. All of us who hold strong views can occasionally get things out of proportion and start seeing our political opponents as enemies of society. I, as one of Mr Clark’s chattering nonentities, love my country dearly but I reserve the right to my own vision of a better Britain, one in which, for instance, no citizens are ever described by politicians as nonentities. I am happy to accept that dons, actors, commentators and playwrights on the Conservative side of the fence are of honourable and decent intent, surely Mr Clark has the grace to reciprocate?
